The meeting that we are organizing represents an opportunity to bring together, for the first time, two largely distinct groups whose research efforts have been aimed at a common topic for many years. That topic is membrane transport, particularly within the secretory and endocytotic pathways. Membrane transport can be regarded as a two-sided coin. One side being studied by traditional membrane "traffickers". The work of this group has been focused on the identification and characterization of regulatory factors for the budding and excision of transport intermediates from donor membranes, and the targetting, docking and fusion of those intermediates to acceptor membranes. Well known examples of factors involved in these processes include COPs, SNAPs, SNAREs, NSF and a variety of GTPases. The other side of the membrane transport coin is being investigated by "motorists". This group has been primarily concerned with the cytoskeletal structures, molecular motors and linker proteins that control how endomembrane compartments are spatially organized within the cytoplasm, and serve as highways along which transport vesicles move between donor and acceptor compartments. Most work in this area has focused on microtubules, and motor proteins of the kinesin and dynein families, but recent studies have also emphasized the importance of microfilaments and myosin motors in membrane transport. The development of a comprehensive understanding of membrane transport will require integration of data obtained both by the traffickers and the motorists. The primary goal of the meeting, therefore, is to bridge the gap of understanding and appreciation that presently separates the two groups. An additional goal is to emphasize the role of membrane transport in disease. Bringing together traffickers and motorists at the same place and time will provide an unprecedented opportunity for exchange of information and cross- fertilization of ideas in the rapidly progressing field of membrane transport.